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March 18, 2008

Taaz Gives Me A Reasonable Excuse To Post Pictures Of Angelina Jolie

Michael Arrington

44 comments »

On the left is a picture of plain old Angelina Jolie. But on the right…well we’ve got Angelina after she’s been through the Taaz virtual makeover service.

The service, which launches today, uses some of the same tricks as many of the Flash-based photo editing tools we’ve covered in the past. Taaz has added proprietary facial recognition software so that it can, for example, figure out where your lips are when you want to put on lipstick. Taaz also differs from normal photo editing tools in that it is specifically set up to help users (mostly women) see how they might look with different hair, eyes, makeup, etc. Finished makeovers can then be shared with other users, rated, commented, etc.

The tools are dead simple to use (thanks, Adobe) and I had a lot of fun testing the service. See the image below for me with cool hair and a lot of red stuff on my cheeks. They’ve also included a number of original articles on beauty and style, and helpful hints like this one: “Contrary to popular belief, matching your eye shadow to your eye color enhances your eyes, making them pop.” Good to know.

The company is based in San Diego, California. They’ve taken two rounds of financing - a seed round from UCSD vonLiebig Center and a Series A round from iSherpa Capital and Crawley Hatfield Capital. Taaz was founded by David Kriegman, Satya P. Mallick, and Kevin Barnes.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 5:50 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  5. Taaz: Expect Myspace to get a whole lot prettier | Sophistechate

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Comments

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  1. Mark Avey

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:04 am

    That’s a neat looking app, Michael. Of course, you do realise you inadvertently posted the “before” image of yourself and not the “after” one? :)

  2. Cesar Cardoso

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:07 am

    Posting Angelina Jolie pictures shouldn’t need any excuses. :D

  3. drew olanoff

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:16 am

    I’m prettier than you are, Arrington:
    http://flickr.com/photos/bestdamntech/2343269734/

  4. lawrence

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:26 am

    are those your ‘before’ teeth?

    if so, you have a nice set of pearly white chompers

  5. Derrick

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:26 am

    I prefer the “before” picture of Angelina Jolie.

  6. Bruce Keener

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:30 am

    I look forward to your next excuse for posting a picture of Angelina Jolie :)

  7. Mike Potter

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:31 am

    Another application built with Adobe Flex.

    Check out more at http://flex.org/showcase/

    Mike

    Adobe Flex Marketing Team

  8. Sarah Meyers

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:33 am

    Angelina Jolie is so hot!

    How old is she now?

    I’m sticking to Seashore for editing pictures.

  9. Mike Picture looks very scary, ugly & annoying

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:38 am

    Man, People who look at picture of Mike Arrington. They find it ugly, annoying, very very annoying, scary, and extreme ugly. I want to stop visiting techcrunch.

    Mike Arrington looks like Exorcist movie.
    http://www.google.com/search?h.....gle+Search
    The eyes look almost alike.

  10. Joe Arson

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:40 am

    http://www.taaz.com/MakeoverDe.....9f56%2Ejpg

    ’nuff said.

  11. open for business

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:43 am

    Don’t Taaz me bro!

    couldn’t help it

  12. Roy

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:46 am

    …I don’t want my eyes to pop… sounds most unpleasant…

  13. Sarah Meyers

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:48 am

    Who would use this anyway? I thought men liked the natural look of women without makeup on. If you want to wear makeup then apply it yourself. It takes far less time than editing a photo.

  14. 113.com

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:58 am

    Impressive.

  15. kuldeep

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:59 am

    What were u thinking when u edited your photo?

  16. petnos

    March 18th, 2008 at 7:01 am

    Taaz seems a cool stuff.

  17. Olubi Ezra

    March 18th, 2008 at 7:03 am

    @13. You could experiment on the software and come up with a nice one to be implemented on the real person.

  18. Maya

    March 18th, 2008 at 7:07 am

    But you can still enjoy the mazic only on http://moviemazic.com

  19. Frank Church

    March 18th, 2008 at 7:20 am

    Yeah, Lois Griffin is hot too.

    I guess the best consumers are open-mouthed donkeys that would be interested in such an application.

    If you can get their money, take it.

  20. Alexander

    March 18th, 2008 at 7:37 am

    Do they have fully automatic recognition of human faces and facial features like Luxand.com? It would be great.

  21. TheBloggerTips

    March 18th, 2008 at 8:04 am

    Is this payable application tool or free stuff can be used by bloggers to makeover our own pictures?

  22. Mark Johnson

    March 18th, 2008 at 8:59 am

    Another application for shameless-self-marketing online? I thought advertising from corporations was bad; when people get into it I’m completely overloaded.

  23. dave

    March 18th, 2008 at 9:29 am

    damn, this is brilliant - and timely! the market sucks, so maybe before some chick (or arrington) drops like 200+ on hair coloring and restyling, she can check it out before making the investment…

  24. matt

    March 18th, 2008 at 9:29 am

    That is one ugly woman being used in the demo…

  25. Alex

    March 18th, 2008 at 10:17 am

    Arrington’s pic = Erik Estrada

  26. MrktMind

    March 18th, 2008 at 10:19 am

    This has been done before.

    What they really need is a Flex app that will let women see what they would be like with a different personality!!!

  27. weeeee

    March 18th, 2008 at 10:59 am

    and the point is?
    looking for glamour shots to buy em up?

  28. Harry Wang

    March 18th, 2008 at 1:12 pm

    @Mike A.: You look like Richie Cunningham meets Kosmo Kramer in that photo. Good grief!

    Harry “telling it like it is” Wang

  29. Sneezy Melon

    March 18th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    looks good. only to mess around.

  30. Z-lot

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:45 pm

    I hope these Taaz guys are going to organize a drag queen contest soon… or expand the site to include makeovers for men (by default) as well.

    Anyway, vote for me, the prettiest redhead around!

    http://tinyurl.com/2admxx

  31. Sarah Meyers

    March 18th, 2008 at 9:19 pm

    I could only find this photo with a Creative Commons license to mix and mash:

    http://farm2.static.flickr.com.....1188767269

    The picture I used is violating copyright, but isn’t every other photo being uploaded to the site doing the same thing? What does that mean for Taaz moving forward?

  32. Sarah Meyers

    March 18th, 2008 at 9:33 pm

    @#17 This one is for you:

    BEFORE: http://www.flickr.com/photos/s.....344182805/

    AFTER: http://www.flickr.com/photos/s.....344182803/

    I think she looks better before. Don’t you?

  33. Daniel in San Diego

    March 19th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    You can watch a two minute video demo of Taaz on YouTube. The creators of Taaz are from UC San Diego, and that’s where this video was made:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGE2zGQypbA

  34. Marcheline

    March 19th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    The fact that you can even THINK the words “plain old Angelina Jolie”, nevermind include them in an article, displays the shocking truth about the sad state of affairs between your ears.

    8-)

    - M

  35. miki

    March 26th, 2008 at 3:37 am

    bella!

  36. Brian

    March 31st, 2008 at 3:30 pm

    This is a great example of technology-meets-commerce. There are huge money making opportunities in this space. For all the women who don’t want to spend all day in the house-of-mirrors at the shopping mall, they can order these products online and see what they’d look like ahead of time. Imagine the potential affiliate revenues. Plus, you can make anybody look like a clownish whore, which is always fun too!

  37. charly

    April 3rd, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    In the application referred (including makeup), TAZZ implements a technique known and patented. It is a factual note counterfeiting. It is doubtful. Oh !

  38. Al

    April 15th, 2008 at 12:07 am

    Hasn’t MakeoverSolutions been doing this for the past 8 years or so?

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